The field of the invention regards systems and methods for establishing or maintaining network clusters. More specifically, the consistency or adaptability of network software clusters is measured, tracked or maintained using machine parsable codes, such as a matrix barcode or other machine readable codes.
Application clustering or software clustering links multiple computer servers into a cluster—a group of servers that act like a single system. Each of the servers in a cluster may maintain the same information and may collectively perform administrative tasks such as load balancing, determination of node failures, and assignment failover duty. Application clusters are readily considered scalable because servers may be added or removed from the cluster as needs arise or as technology warrants.
When an application cluster is created, supplemented or changed, versions of various software applications and operating systems may need to be confirmed as being compatible or as being within a range of suitable compatibility in order for the cluster to function. Such a compatibility analysis may be automated by software for testing application cluster configurations. A compatibility analysis may also be performed by system administrators, who may visually compare the software configurations of all the nodes of the cluster to confirm that all nodes are compatible with each other. The automated and the manual comparisons may each be difficult when comparing large software clusters having multiple software dependencies. For example, checking compatibility of application software and operating systems can be tedious and prone to erroneous results.
Automated compatibility testing systems can include storing configuration details in image headers that may be used to check version compatibility. These compatibility testing systems may utilize version code-based image headers to store configuration details. The headers may then be compared during installation to verify version compatibility. Using these headers may serve to limit the amount of information to be stored and compared.